Chester County Photos – SC Picture Projecthttp://www.sciway.net/sc-photos
The purpose of the South Carolina Picture Project is to celebrate the beauty of the Palmetto State while preserving some of its vanishing landscapes.Fri, 09 Dec 2016 14:48:17 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.6.1http://www.sciway.net/sc-photos/wp-content/uploads/cropped-sciwayicon-32x32.jpgChester County Photos – SC Picture Projecthttp://www.sciway.net/sc-photos
3232Great Falls Jailhttp://www.sciway.net/sc-photos/chester-county/great-falls-jail.html
http://www.sciway.net/sc-photos/chester-county/great-falls-jail.html#respondFri, 21 Oct 2016 15:22:58 +0000http://www.sciway.net/sc-photos/?p=71144This abandoned jail – nicknamed “Stoney Lonesome” – stands on the bank of the Catawba River in Great Falls. Thought to have been built around 1912, the jail was unearthed during a 2011 excavation led by the town.

In 1905, Southern Power Company was founded by William States Lee, Dr. W. Gill Wylie, and James Buchanan Duke (Southern Power later became Duke Power). After the completion of the dam and power house in 1907, the three men recruited more investors and founded Republic Textile Mills Company to capitalize on the massive hydroelectric power that their energy business had harnessed. The first Republic Mill opened in Great Falls in 1910, followed by another in 1917 and a third in 1923. The commercial district of Great Falls developed during this time, and that is likely when this two-cell jail was built.

The present mayor of Great Falls, Donald Camp, suspects that use of the jail was discontinued around 1951. After its closing, the vacant building of 360 square feet sat neglected. Some believe that when the first Republic Cotton Mill expanded its parking lot, the jail was blanketed with dirt. Over time, soil continued to accumulate around the jail while vegetation grew on top of it. Since being unearthed, no plans have been made for the building beyond clearing the area around it.

The jail is 20 feet deep and 18 feet wide with a cement floor and roof. Remaining within its brick walls are a toilet, a vent pipe, and a bed frame. Metal bars still guard the windows, which prevented those captured in Stoney Lonesome from escaping down the roaring Catawba River.

]]>http://www.sciway.net/sc-photos/chester-county/great-falls-jail.html/feed/0Pryor Colored Schoolhttp://www.sciway.net/sc-photos/chester-county/pryor-colored-school.html
http://www.sciway.net/sc-photos/chester-county/pryor-colored-school.html#respondWed, 07 Sep 2016 18:23:42 +0000http://www.sciway.net/sc-photos/?p=69147This rural Chester schoolhouse stands on private property. Built in 1898 for African-American students in the community, it was likely supported by a church of the same name which has been lost to time. The school operated until 1956; during the 1950s, many schools consolidated, leaving small schoolhouses such as this one empty.

In order to stave off integration, South Carolina began building new schools for black students in 1951 that were known as “equalization” schools, though most were not equal to their white counterparts. Despite Brown vs. Board of Education, which in 1954 ordered schools to desegregate, most South Carolina schools did not actually desegregate until the 1960s and early 1970s.

During the 1980s, a local family leased the land on which the school stands and grew fruit and corn on the property. The schoolhouse was used as a fruit stand to sell the family’s harvests. Today the school remains in the hands of private owners. The building and contents are well-maintained, appearing as though students could be called to class at any moment. The owners are actively looking to find a place to relocate the school so that it can continue to be preserved.

Pryor Colored School Info

Pryor Colored School Map

Take Me There
]]>http://www.sciway.net/sc-photos/chester-county/pryor-colored-school.html/feed/0Rossville Community Centerhttp://www.sciway.net/sc-photos/chester-county/rossville-community-center.html
http://www.sciway.net/sc-photos/chester-county/rossville-community-center.html#respondMon, 23 May 2016 20:19:54 +0000http://www.sciway.net/sc-photos/?p=65202This brick building in the Rossville community just outside of Great Falls first served the area as a school in the early part of the twentieth century. The first Rossville School combined with another nearby school, DeWitt Cloud, in 1915. The combined schools met in the original Rossville School, which was housed in a frame building, until 1924. That year, the school moved into this building. Initially, the brick building was an elementary school, though other grades were added to the school in later years. The first frame building eventually burned.

The building was in use as a school for around 20 years before becoming the Rossville Community Center in 1947. The following year, ownership of the former school transferred from the school district to the Rossville Community Club. In subsequent years, the building served as the location of a local Head Start, the Rossville Volunteer Fire Department, a polling place, and the site of various classes and activities. Private groups also regularly use the facility for gatherings and celebrations. After years of fundraising efforts in the early 2000s, including selling meals and hosting events, the community board was able to secure the necessary funds to update the building to its present state in 2013. It remains a popular event site for residents in the Great Falls area.

]]>http://www.sciway.net/sc-photos/chester-county/rossville-community-center.html/feed/0Davega Buildinghttp://www.sciway.net/sc-photos/chester-county/davega-building.html
http://www.sciway.net/sc-photos/chester-county/davega-building.html#respondThu, 17 Mar 2016 18:04:04 +0000http://www.sciway.net/sc-photos/?p=63031This austere commercial building in downtown Chester was built sometime in the mid-nineteenth century prior to or at the onset of the Civil War. It likely bears the name of Dr. Abraham Davega, a pharmacist who served many prominent roles in Chester, including mayor in the years just after the Civil War. Davega was also president of the Chester and Lenoir Railroad; the rail line was destroyed by Union troops during the war.

The building is most notably associated with Mary Boykin Chesnut, whose Civil War diary was published as a book in 1905. Titled, A Diary from Dixie, the book remains popular today. An annotated version of the diary, titled, Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, was published in 1981 by historian C. Vann Woodward. It won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1982.

Born near Stateburg in 1823 as Mary Boykin Miller, she was the daughter of Governor Stephen Miller, who served South Carolina in this role from 1828 through 1830. She later married James Chesnut, Jr. of Mulberry Plantation near Camden. James Chesnut, Jr. was elected to the United States Senate and served from 1858 until 1860. He was also elected to the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States of America, which met in Richmond, Virginia. It was from Richmond that Mary Chesnut fled during the occupation of the city by Federal troops. She is said to have stayed in the Davega Building briefly during her evacuation, composing part of her diary here. The Davega Building also served as a post office in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The focal point of the Chester Historic District is The Hill, a triangular-shaped plaza on an eminence at the center of the city, around which the original settlement grew, and which now includes the city hall and a relatively well-preserved collection of late nineteenth and early twentieth century commercial buildings. The district now also includes the remainder of the central business area, containing the county courthouse and the federal building, as well as most of the older residential areas of the city and the early churches that are within them. Of the 475 properties in the district, 324 are considered to contribute to its historical character. The city of Chester was formed in the late eighteenth century as Chesterville. However, most of the properties included in the district reflect the city’s history through the second half of the nineteenth and in the early twentieth centuries. As a result, the buildings display a wide variety of architectural styles reflective of stylistic trends during that time span, including Greek Revival, Gothic Revival, Victorian, Romanesque Revival, Queen Anne, Classical Revival, and Bungalow. In addition, the district reflects the city’s role as a commercial center for the surrounding county, and as its political and governmental hub.

]]>http://www.sciway.net/sc-photos/chester-county/davega-building.html/feed/0Chester Little Theaterhttp://www.sciway.net/sc-photos/chester-county/chester-little-theater.html
http://www.sciway.net/sc-photos/chester-county/chester-little-theater.html#respondThu, 17 Mar 2016 18:03:48 +0000http://www.sciway.net/sc-photos/?p=63018This Art Deco-style movie theater in downtown Chester opened sometime around 1913 – possibly earlier – as the Dreamland Theater. The owner of the Dreamland Theater was a man from Greensboro, North Carolina named Roland Hill. In the late 1920s Hill sold the cinema to Joseph Walters. Walters renamed the business the City Theater.

Walters’ ownership of the theater was brief, as he sold it to Fred Powell shortly after Powell moved to Chester in 1935. The new owner changed the cinema’s name to Powell Theater and renovated the building. Sensing opportunity in the movie theater business, Powell opened a second theater on Main Street with an adjoining soda shop in 1939. He called the second cinema the Chester Theater, and he eventually opening a third cinema on Gadsden Street called the Palmetto Theater. The site of the Palmetto Theater is now a realty office, and the Chester Theater on Main Street was demolished in 1969.

In later years this building was home to the Chester Little Theater, which hosted live productions. However, due to structural issues, the Chester Little Theater had to vacate the building. Today it stands empty.

]]>http://www.sciway.net/sc-photos/chester-county/chester-little-theater.html/feed/0Lewis Innhttp://www.sciway.net/sc-photos/chester-county/lewis-inn.html
http://www.sciway.net/sc-photos/chester-county/lewis-inn.html#respondTue, 01 Mar 2016 16:24:09 +0000http://www.sciway.net/sc-photos/?p=62258Aaron Burr, who served the United States as Vice President from 1801 through 1805, is a household name in Chester. In fact, this historic home, thought to be the oldest standing structure in Chester County, once housed the notorious vice president on his way to Virginia to stand trial for treason. Burr had been arrested in 1807 for the murder of Alexander Hamilton, whom he shot in a duel in Weehawken, New Jersey on July 11, 1804. Hamilton died the following day. Still in the role of Vice President, Burr briefly left his home state of New York for South Carolina. His daughter, Theodosia, lived in Murrells Inlet with her husband, Joseph Alston, at Oaks Plantation (now part of Brookgreen Gardens). Burr then returned to Washington, D.C. to fulfill the remainder of his term.

Following his term’s end in 1805, Burr traveled to New Orleans before he was finally arrested in 1807 for the murder of Hamilton. He and his guards passed through Chester on the way to his trial in Richmond, Virginia. Legend holds that when in town, he jumped from his horse onto a rock, pleading with the townspeople to rescue him. His cries ignored, Burr was instead locked up here, in the Lewis Inn, for the night. Burr’s infamy in Chester deepened when he allegedly tried to escape the inn after bribing a housemaid to leave a door unlatched. Though he was recaptured and taken to Virginia, all charges against Burr were eventually dropped. The rock where Burr stood to beg for his freedom is displayed in downtown Chester and is known as the Aaron Burr Rock; the road on which the inn stands is named Aaron Burr Road.

Despite the inn’s connection to Burr and the country’s most famous duel, the structure has historical value in its own right. Built of dovetailed logs in 1750, it sat on the Saluda Trail, once a popular stagecoach route. Large hand-carved mantels and wrought iron hardware grace the structure’s interior. Another tale from the inn dates to the Revolutionary War; in 1780 Colonel James Lyles died on the steps of the Lewis Inn during his attempt to get home and see his newborn daughter.

The former inn, which is now a private residence, has changed ownership many times over the generations. In the 1980s, new owners purchased the property from a local farmer and began restoring the house. During this period, many of the home’s original features were restored. For example, the home’s interior logs were exposed, and its exterior shingles, added in 1923, were replaced with the present siding.

This fine example of log construction with many original features, built about 1750, is one of very few remaining in South Carolina. The inn was a tavern during Colonial and Revolutionary days, and also a stagecoach stop. It was made famous in 1807 when Aaron Burr, the captured vice president of the United States, slayer of Alexander Hamilton, spent the night there on his way to Richmond for trial on charges of treason. Legend has it that Burr escaped briefly because a bribed maid left his bedroom door unlatched. The inn is a “matched” two-story house of dovetailed logs pinned together and chinked with clay, covered with clapboard, and re-covered with brown shingles in 1923. It has a lateral gable roof, with exterior end chimneys, and a one-story right wing. The matching sections – back is a one-story ell; the other is a front shed-roof porch which extends across the façade to the wing. The interior features tongue and groove paneling, large hand-carved mantels, wide board doors with wrought iron hinges, and a narrow stairway leading to a second floor hallway on which two bedrooms open.

]]>http://www.sciway.net/sc-photos/chester-county/lewis-inn.html/feed/0Chester Masonic Templehttp://www.sciway.net/sc-photos/chester-county/chester-masonic-temple.html
http://www.sciway.net/sc-photos/chester-county/chester-masonic-temple.html#respondTue, 23 Feb 2016 14:22:25 +0000http://www.sciway.net/sc-photos/?p=61892The National Exchange Bank of Chester was established in 1906, and this Greek Revival building with the imposing Doric columns was built in 1919. The former bank is one of several commercial buildings standing on The Hill, the city’s public square and original business district. Its opulent marble facade reflected the success of the bank in its first several years of operation. However, the National Exchange Bank of Chester closed in 1933 when one of its directors was caught in an embezzlement scandal.

Following the closing of the bank, the building was purchased in 1942 by the Masonic Temple, which maintains ownership to this day. The stately structure was featured in the 1983 television miniseries “Chiefs.” More recently, the building was explored in an episode of “Rebel Gold,” a reality show about the search for Confederate treasure, in 2015. The iconic building was put on the market by the Masonic Temple at the beginning of 2016.

The Chester Masonic Temple is listed in the National Register as the National Exchange Building within the Chester Historic District:

The focal point of the Chester Historic District is The Hill, a triangular-shaped plaza on an eminence at the center of the city, around which the original settlement grew, and which now includes the city hall and a relatively well-preserved collection of late nineteenth and early twentieth century commercial buildings. The district now also includes the remainder of the central business area, containing the county courthouse and the federal building, as well as most of the older residential areas of the city and the early churches that are within them. Of the 475 properties in the district, 324 are considered to contribute to its historical character. The city of Chester was formed in the late eighteenth century as Chesterville. However, most of the properties included in the district reflect the city’s history through the second half of the nineteenth and in the early twentieth centuries. As a result, the buildings display a wide variety of architectural styles reflective of stylistic trends during that time span, including Greek Revival, Gothic Revival, Victorian, Romanesque Revival, Queen Anne, Classical Revival, and Bungalow. In addition, the district reflects the city’s role as a commercial center for the surrounding county, and as its political and governmental hub.

]]>http://www.sciway.net/sc-photos/chester-county/chester-masonic-temple.html/feed/0Pressly-White Househttp://www.sciway.net/sc-photos/chester-county/pressly-white-house.html
http://www.sciway.net/sc-photos/chester-county/pressly-white-house.html#respondMon, 22 Feb 2016 17:51:56 +0000http://www.sciway.net/sc-photos/?p=61784This ornate, two-and-a-half story home in historic Chester was built in 1884 for the Reverend Mason Wylie Pressly and designed by architect Samuel Sloan. Now a festive pink tone, it has been painted both white and green in the past. Pressly served the congregation of Chester Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church from 1882 through 1886. Following his ownership, the home served as the residence for several generations of the White family. Locals say that the ground floor was the location of a gift shop called the Ink Well during the 1970s and 1980s.

Michael Mascari, who contributed the photo above, adds that the home is located next to Chester News and Reporter, at the confluence of an intersection which merges Saluda, Hudson, and York Street. Located on an ample piece of property, he says, the home also features a carriage house.

The focal point of the Chester Historic District is The Hill, a triangular-shaped plaza on an eminence at the center of the city, around which the original settlement grew, and which now includes the city hall and a relatively well-preserved collection of late nineteenth and early twentieth century commercial buildings. The district now also includes the remainder of the central business area, containing the county courthouse and the federal building, as well as most of the older residential areas of the city and the early churches that are within them. Of the 475 properties in the district, 324 are considered to contribute to its historical character. The city of Chester was formed in the late eighteenth century as Chesterville. However, most of the properties included in the district reflect the city’s history through the second half of the nineteenth and in the early twentieth centuries. As a result, the buildings display a wide variety of architectural styles reflective of stylistic trends during that time span, including Greek Revival, Gothic Revival, Victorian, Romanesque Revival, Queen Anne, Classical Revival, and Bungalow. In addition, the district reflects the city’s role as a commercial center for the surrounding county, and as its political and governmental hub.

Reflections on the Pressly-White House

Cathy Vennelle Carter Pierce notes, “Back in the late ’70s and early ’80s, it housed a business called “The Ink Well” in the lower part. Kind of like a Hallmark/gift store as well as a home for my former 6th grade math teacher, Mrs. Cleo Chamberlain.”

]]>http://www.sciway.net/sc-photos/chester-county/pressly-white-house.html/feed/0Brainerd Institutehttp://www.sciway.net/sc-photos/chester-county/brainerd-institute.html
http://www.sciway.net/sc-photos/chester-county/brainerd-institute.html#commentsTue, 02 Feb 2016 17:24:05 +0000http://www.sciway.net/sc-photos/?p=60884The Brainerd Institute in Chester was founded in 1868 by the Board of Missions for Freedmen of the Presbyterian Church USA. The Board of Missions was a group organized by the Presbyterian church at the end of the Civil War to educate and train former slaves for the workforce. Two years earlier, a school for African-Americans was started in Chester by a pair of white women from New York and New Jersey – E.E. Richmond and Carolyn Kent, respectively – supported by the Freedmen’s Bureau. The school was initially established at Brawley Plantation just outside of Chester.

Richmond and Kent later later moved the school into town, where it operated until 1868. That year, the Freedmen’s Bureau announced that it would be closing the school. However, that same year, a minister representing the Board of Missions, the Reverend Samuel Loomis, was scouting the state for places to open similar schools. Following the popularity and success of Chester’s Freedmen’s Bureau school, the Presbyterian group opened the Brainerd Institute, which served African-American students in the Chester vicinity, including neighboring York and Lancaster counties. The school was named for David Brainerd, an early Presbyterian missionary from Massachusetts.

The school operated from several different locations before settling at its current site, on property once owned by Allen deGraffenried, known as the Baron’s Estate, circa 1882. A large home already existing on the property housed the school building, and new dormitories were added to the grounds. The above building is Kumler Hall, a boys’ dormitory built in 1916. By then the school taught up to tenth grade, adding grades 11 and 12 shortly afterwards. Graduates of the Brainerd Institute often continued their education at historically black colleges such as Allen University and Benedict College, both in Columbia. The school eventually encompassed 18 acres, and the last graduation was held in 1939 following a period of decreased enrollment as more public schools for black students became available.

A member of the last graduating class was Vivian Ayers Allen, a Pulitzer Prize-nominated poet and mother of actress Phylicia Rashad and director, dancer, and choreographer Debbie Allen. Rashad purchased Kumler Hall and 12 surrounding acres in 1999 for her mother for the purpose of restoring the building and converting it into a cultural arts center. The three women periodically host fundraising events for the Brainerd Estate, as the property is now called, which maintain a focus on the arts and include dance workshops.

Kumler Hall, the only building remaining from the Brainerd Institute, is listed in the National Register:

Brainerd Institute was one of the earliest and finest of the many private schools established for freedmen in South Carolina in the years just after the Civil War. Brainerd was operated from ca. 1868 until 1940 by the Board of Missions of the Presbyterian Church, USA and offered vocational, industrial, mechanical, classical college preparatory, and teacher training. From 1868 until the turn of the century Brainerd provided the only schooling available for black children in Chester, and it provided the only high school until the 1920s. Brainerd occupied several locations before finally settling on the present site, the old DeGraffenreid land, where the mansion house was utilized as the main building. Two vacant and rapidly deteriorating buildings are the only remnants of the once active 21 acre campus, Kumler Hall and the ca. 1900 Martha Tweed Administration Building, which is in ruinous condition. Only Kumler Hall, a ca. 1916 brick two-story boys dormitory, retains sufficient structural and architectural integrity to meet National Register criteria. Kumler Hall has a central longitudinal hallway opening onto the porch, with a central single-flight stairway and classrooms and dormitory rooms opening on either side on both floors and the basement. The floors are wooden and the ceilings are plaster. The building is significant as the only intact physical reminder of one of the finest and most successful elements of this unique educational system for blacks.

]]>http://www.sciway.net/sc-photos/chester-county/brainerd-institute.html/feed/1Lando Schoolhttp://www.sciway.net/sc-photos/chester-county/lando-school.html
http://www.sciway.net/sc-photos/chester-county/lando-school.html#respondMon, 19 Oct 2015 20:02:02 +0000http://www.sciway.net/sc-photos/?p=57364This abandoned school building, located in the former mill community of Lando, was built between 1904 and 1905 for the children of Manetta Mill workers. The ornate Italian Renaissance style of this three-story brick building would be unusual for any school, but its opulence particularly stands out in a Southern mill village where companies generally invested in solid but more humble structures. Lando School’s design serves as a testament to the Manetta Mill’s success. At its peak, the textile manufacturer employed some 2,000 people; at one time it was the largest producer of blankets in the world. Though the mill continued operations until 1991, the school closed in 1955 when the Chester County schools consolidated.

Today the school stands as a lonely reminder of the community’s former economic prosperity. Just a handful of people remain in Lando, with the ghostly structures of the village’s once-flourishing past towering over the near-empty village.

The Lando School, built in 1904-05 as the school for Manetta Mill, is architecturally significant as an excellent example of an early twentieth century school built in a textile mill village of the South Carolina Piedmont and as an example of the use of Italian Renaissance Revival design that is rare in South Carolina public school architecture of the period, and even more rare in textile mill school architecture. Lando School closed in 1955 when it and other rural Chester County schools were consolidated. Manetta Mills remained in operation under a succession of owners until 1991. The community that once was home to over 2,000 people has, at the time of nomination, a population of less than twenty, and fewer than 10 of 181 mill houses survive. With the mill having been demolished the school is likely the most visible and dominant public building within the village of Lando. The school is a three-story rectangular brick building set upon a concrete foundation featuring brick on the first two floors and brick and stucco on the third floor. The L-shaped hipped roof is in two sections, with one over the classroom section and another over the entrance and stairwell, and is clad in pressed metal shingles. The use of belt coursing, corbelling, and contrasting colors and textures articulate the building’s stories and help define it as a good local example of Italian Renaissance Revival style composition. The building historically featured double-hung, eight-over-eight windows on the first two floors, and eight-pane round and eight-pane single-hung windows on the shortened third floor or attic story. The first two floors of the school housed classrooms and the main level of the auditorium, while the third floor was essentially balcony seating for the auditorium.